The invention concerns a toothbrush having a brush head made from plastic and individual plastic bristles vertically embedded into the brush head disposed at a small separations with respect to each other.
Toothbrushes of this type are known in the art (WO 96/27 308). In contrast to conventional toothbrushes with which the bristles are collected into individual bundles and a plurality of bundles are mounted to the brush head, the above mentioned toothbrushes have the advantage that the ends of the bristles which are substantially active during cleaning are evenly distributed over the entire brush surface so that the medically recommended cleaning method from red to white, that is to say a substantially vertical guiding of the brush with an overlapping slightly pivoting motion, leads to cleaning (of the teeth) and massaging (of the gums) in the entire region swept over by the bristle stock. With toothbrushes having the conventional bundle stock, certain parts of the gums and or teeth remain untreated. One had tried to counteract this problem by disposing the bristles in a non-parallel fashion within the bundle so that they were spread apart. This had however, during cleaning, the consequence that the bristles stood at differing angles with respect to the surface being cleaned. This can cause injury to the gums. In addition, the tilted bristles are more active in the transitional region towards the side of the bristle than at their rounded bristle ends. Since such transition regions can be edged if the bristles are not perfectly rounded, injury to the gums or fine lesions of the enamel can result.
Among other factors, the flexural strength of the bristles is important for the effectiveness of the toothbrush. In a bundle, this is substantially determined by the length of the bundle and the packing density of the bristles in the bundle as well as by the diameter of the individual bristles, wherein the latter has the smallest influence of all since the bristles in the bundle support one another so that the flexural strength of the bundle is many times larger than that of the individual bristles. In the above mentioned conventional toothbrush (WO 96/27 308) having individually standing bristles, the flexural strength is additionally influenced by the separation of the bristles from another. Due to this separation, the influence of the bristle diameter is more prominent than in bundles. The flexural strength can thereby be varied in steps finer than those standard with conventional toothbrushes: namely, "soft", "middle" and "hard". The reduced embedded length of the individual bristles compared to bundles allows the height of the brush head to be reduced.
Dentistry has pointed out that the care and cleaning of the molar teeth, in particular on the outer side of the teeth (distal), is substantially worse than in the front tooth region. This has to do with the poor accessibility of the molars, the frequently confined space of the distal region which, given abnormalities in tooth formation, can assume serious dimensions, and the frequent increased sensitivity and irritation in the distal region of the molars which, depending on how the toothbrush is introduced, can even induce vomiting. Even the red-white cleaning method recommended by dentists, can not be properly carried out in the molar region due to the confined space. The increased pressure also causes injury to the gums and lesions in the enamel in this region.
It is the underlying purpose of the invention to create a toothbrush which also permits easy application in the molar region allowing the red-white method to be carried out and particular facilitating equally satisfactory cleaning of the molar regions in the distal area.